SMART WIRELESS- IRRIGATION SYSTEM WITH ALERT SMS FOR

RICE FIELD

Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND

With the Philippines’ rapid increase in population, this calls a need for

heightened agricultural production. Irrigated agriculture has been a vital source in

agricultural production. Water is a basic component of all known life on earth. Water

can both sustain life in correct quantities and threaten life when it is not available.

Water as a result is a very precious natural resource that must not be wasted. For crop

irrigation, optimal water efficiency means minimizing losses due to

evaporation, runoff or subsurface drainage while maximizing production. Soil

moisture sensors can be used to determine how much water contents are available in

soil and how much water is needed to satisfy plant requirements.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The results of the study will be of great benefit to the following:

The project will provide a device that will give benefits to the farmers. It will help

them to save water for their crops and keep the soil moisturized.

Objectives of the study

General: To develop and design a smart wireless irrigation system with alert SMS for

rice field

Specific: 1. To design water-saving device using the principles of microprocessor

and microcontrollers

2. To generate SMS using the principles of GSM for updating the status
 3. To build a wireless irrigation system can be operated from remote location

through wireless transmission so there is no need to concern about irrigation timing as

per crop or soil condition.

4. To improve a low cost smart irrigation system

Chapter 2

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Smart irrigation systems tailor watering schedules and run times automatically to

meet specific landscape needs. It aims to reduce the wastage of water and the labour that is

used to carry out irrigation manually. The system aims at detecting the moisture content of

the soil using sensors that are placed directly into soil. Sensors detect the water and moisture

level and send readings to a fixed access point (Gori, Singh, Thanawala, Vishwakarma, &

Shaikh, 2017). Unlike traditional irrigation controllers that operate on a pre-set programmed

schedule and timers, smart irrigation controllers monitor soil conditions, evaporation and

plant water use to automatically adjust the watering schedule to actual condition site. This

system really improves old ways of farming (Gori, Singh, Thanawala, Vishwakarma, &

Shaikh, 2017). The purpose of irrigation scheduling is to determine the exact amount of water

to apply to the field and the exact timing for application. The amount of water applied is

determined by using a criterion to determine irrigation need and a strategy to prescribe how

much water to apply in any situation (Abshiro & Singh, 2018).

Watering to the soil is mainly depend upon soil moisture and temperature sensor

values, if moisture content in the soil is less than the threshold, then it indicates watering is

required to the field. In the literature, few irrigation management systems are reported, which

have some limitations like, watering is done to the field without analysing the soil
parameters, this causes non uniform water to the field, so it results in wastage of water and

decrease in the yield. Sometimes human intervention is also required. To overcome them, the

farmer needs an automatic irrigation system with advanced features like measuring the soil

parameters (soil moisture, soil temperature and humidity sensors, etc) (Sunehra, 2019). The

water can be dripped to the roots through tubes and solenoid valves. Raspberry pi serves as a

pocket personal computer with Linux operating system. In conventional method it involves

the person to initiate the process through email by creating an email account as irrigate for “X

minutes”. And this message is passed to the Arduino through raspberry pi. From Arduino the

information goes to relay. Based on the information given from the user the relay activates

pump to switch on and off condition. Through solenoid valve water from the tank is passed to

the roots of the plants in the garden (Gori, Singh, Thanawala, Vishwakarma, & Shaikh,

2017).
 Chapter 3

Methodology